Matthew
Haulot
Jen
Fleischer
English
1A, Section 5
3
March 2014
NASCAR as a Sport
Many people say that NASCAR is not a
sport; well it is in many ways. From the technical aspects of the car and
physical aspects of being the driver, NASCAR is arguably more of a sport than
baseball or football. In the following essay there will be examples of what
makes NASCAR a sport and how the drivers are considered athletes. Also there
will be different texts that will be examined and we will look at how those
different genres of text differ from one another. All the documents that follow
have a different meaning and trying to figure out what they mean is the tricky
part.
The first of three genres of text we
will look at is called, The Most Southern
Sport on Earth, by Dan Pierce. The tone of this article is informative. It
talks about how NASCAR got started and how it has progressed over time to
become one of the fastest growing sports in the world. The great thing about
the article is that the language is easy to follow. Being previously
knowledgeable with all this information it was very easy for me to follow but I
found it so easy that even if I wasn’t the information would be easy to take
in. One thing that makes this article so easy to follow is the way that Pierce
uses images to show the history of the sport. The visual images that he uses
puts a great picture in the readers head that it almost makes it impossible to
forget what he is trying to say. Daniel S. Pierce is a professor at the
University of North Carolina. This makes Pierce very creditable and something
else that gives him even more credit is the fact that this is not the only
piece of writing that Pierce has written on NASCAR. He has written two other
books, one being called, Real NASCAR,
and the other being NASCAR vs. Football:
Which Sport Is More Important to the South? Just the fact the Pierce has
written two other books on the same subject shows that he is not only dedicated
to the topic but also well knowledgeable about the topic. An example that
Pierce gives is how he talks about that NASCAR did not have any organization
when they first started. Track owners and promoters said they would change
things but never actually did them. Compared to today this has changed one
hundred percent. Pierce also talks about how the men who started NASCAR made it
what it is today. Men like Bill France Sr. and Red Vogt started to make the
rules of NASCAR that are still followed this day. The main message of this
article is to show how far NASCAR has come. From being completely unorganized
and not having any rules to changing it around in one meeting. The purpose of
this article is just to show the transformation over the years and to educate
people on the rich and exciting early years of NASCAR.
The next document is a photograph.
The picture was taken by Walter Arce who is also very much like Daniel Pierce
in the way that he primarily focuses on only taking pictures of NASCAR. Walter
Arce is an action sports photographer showing that his main interests are
sports and NASCAR being one of them. The layout of this photo is taken with the
idea that you can see everything that is going on around the track. It gives
you a full perspective and full understanding of the track. Like Pierce’s
article this photograph has a tone. The tone of this photograph is chaos. Look
at it, forty-three cars in packed stadium, you can basically hear the roar of
the cars just by looking at it. Unlike The
Most Southern Sport on Earth, this photograph does not contain a language or
writing style. The intended viewer is somebody who likes racing, somebody who
likes excitement and adrenaline. The type of example that Arce provides is how
exciting NASCAR can look. This photo shows how many people go to the races and
how big one of these events can get. There is also evidence in the picture
unlike The Most Southern Sport on Earth, where
you have to believe what Pierce tells you, in this photograph you can look and
see it for yourself. The main argument is to show once again how big the sport
can be and how exciting it can look. The purpose of this photo is to share this
stunning view with everyone. This is like the Super Bowl of NASCAR and not many
people get to experience it so this is a way to share that with everyone.
The final piece of text is the
NASCAR.com website. The layout of this website is very modern. The website is
constantly updated and has so much information available on it that its too
much to take in at one or even two sittings. The tone of NASCAR.com is very
academic. There are writers that only write for the website and are constantly
scribbling down new articles on the latest race or the new news that is
happening in the NASCAR world. This website is very similar to Pierce’s
article. They both talk about the history of the sport with the only difference
being that they discuss different time periods. They are both meant to educate
the reader and inform them on the topic. The intended readers are people who
follow NASCAR and want to get more information on it. The NASCAR website has
many different writers but the main three are David Caraviello, Brad Parrott,
and Reid Spencer. They have written hundreds of articles for NASCAR and have
been doing it for years. There credibility goes farther than Dan Pierces and
Walter Arce. The evidence that these three writers provide is about the latest
news. For example, the most recent articles that will be on the website are
about the past weekends race. They will talk about the winners and the big
moments that happened throughout the weekend. The message here is clear, the
idea is to keep the fans involved and always let them know the latest
information. The purpose of the website is not like the purpose of Pierce’s or
Arce’s work, instead the purpose is to keep people informed and to try and draw
new fans in by telling them the most exciting news they can give them.
In order for a text to be effective
or persuasive it has to be filled with all sorts of details and facts. This is
important because a big deciding factor between a persuasive and non-persuasive
text is gaining trust in your readers. If the reader trusts what the author is
saying it makes everything more believable. For example in Daniel Pierce’s, The Most Southern Sport on Earth, he
gives so much detail starting with his first paragraph when he describes Bill
France loosening his tie and saying thing that put the “fear of god” into his
employees. This sentence in the opening paragraph makes me as a reader believe
that what Pierce is about to tell me is good information. Pierce later goes on
to tell us about how racing in the south really got started with young men
working in mills and factories just trying to survive. The reason why a
photograph can be so effective is because it can mean something different to
anyone who looks at it; only the photographer knows the real meaning behind it.
Out of the three documents I have
gathered I have found that Daniel Pierce’s, The
Most Southern Sport on Earth, to be the most effective. The other documents
are persuasive and fulfilling but not as much as this one. The big thing that
makes Pierce’s message so effective is that he looked at the beginning of
NASCAR and all the problems that Bill France Sr. had to sort out. Pierce talked
about how France stripped drivers of all their winnings and points and
disqualified drivers for minor rule violations. “As drivers increasingly
complained about France's iron hand, they also realized that many of his
decisions benefited them” is a quote that shows how Pierce knows the history of
the sport and that makes him a more effective writer and makes the article that
much more effective. Another factor that makes this article effective is that
it covers a wide range of topic. It talks about the early history of the sport
and how it got started to how France created a union for the drivers and crews.
The document that has the least effective message is the photograph taken by
Arce. The thing that makes this, the least effective document is the fact that
it is just a photo and cannot tell you anymore then what you can see.
I
chose three documents that couldn’t be anymore different from each other. One
is an article that talks about the history of NASCAR while the other source is
a picture that shows what NASCAR is like and how it looks; while the final
source is a website that talks about what is happening in the sport today. All
of these documents are different from each other and focus on a different
topic. The reason why these documents differ from each other is because there
is such a broad range of subjects under the main idea of NASCAR. For example if
Daniel Pierces article on the early days of NASCAR were to randomly start
talking about this past weekends race it would not make sense. That article has
one main idea and that is to talk about the early days.
A
text has three main components to it. The first component is what the topic of
the text is about. This what the text will be covering and what the text will
be talking about or what the main idea of the text is. The second is what it
says. This is what the text is trying to say or what the message is. Every
piece of writing has a message that it is relaying to the audience. This can be
an informative message, a persuasive message, or an argumentative message. Depending
on what the message is will determine on who the audience is and how the
message will be delivered. If it is an argumentative message the delivery may
be stricter and tone while an informative message may be more lay back and
tranquil.
The
type of texts that people read can tell all sorts of things about them. If a
man reads a garden magazine and another reads a car magazine you can tell a lot
about them. Reading expresses who you are and what you like to do. Just by
looking at somebody reading a book or a magazine you can tell what he or she
are like and the type of person that they are. Also by reading different texts
you can get a different view on topics and you learn from what you read.
Reading is what gives us our knowledge so saying, “You are what you read”, is a
perfectly acceptable statement.
Finding
the right articles and resources or any document for that matter is hard. It
takes time; you can’t just pick out any and say its good enough. The three
documents I found took time because I didn’t want to find one that said the
same exact thing as one that I already had or have one that was completely off
the topic I was trying to cover. Daniel Pierces, The Most Southern Sport on
Earth, gave me a view of
the past and left me with everything I needed to know when I was finished
reading. Reading is incredibly important because it broadens your range of
knowledge and opens your mind up to new things. You may look at one topic of
books and think that they are all going to cover the same thing strictly based
on the fact that they are all about the same thing topic but once you open them
up and read and analyze what they say you realize that they all have different
meaning to what it is.
Works Cited
Daniel Pierce. “The Most Southern Sport on Earth.” NASCAR and
the Unions. 7:2. 2001. March 3, 2014
David
Caraviello, Brad Parrott, and Reid Spencer. NASCAR.com.
NASCAR. Web. March 3, 2014
Walter
Arce. “Bristol Motor Speedway.” 123RF. Web. March 4, 2014
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